Arabs and UNSC

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 2016, pp. 44-45

United Nations Report

There’s More Than One Way to Skin the Security Council Cat

By Ian Williams

Two months after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Arab League Ambassador Clovis Maksoud (r) confers with Security Council president Ambassador Noel Dorr of Ireland (l) and Soviet Ambassador Richard S. Ovinnikov, Aug. 6, 1982. The U.S. vetoed a Soviet draft resolution calling for a ban on the supply of arms to Israel until it fully withdrew its troops from Lebanon. (U.N. PHOTO/YUTAKA NAGATA)

THE GOLDEN DAYS HAVE never glistened quite as brightly as we think, but if there were a Golden Age of Arab Unity it was perhaps half a century ago, when an American-born Lebanese Christian, Clovis Maksoud, was an ambassador for the Arab League, first in India, then later in the U.S. and at the U.N. In those days, Arab Unity meant more than a vow ofomerta between governments to cover each thuggish dictator’s rear—certainly to Maksoud, who was a true, but pragmatic believer.

He died in May, in Washington, where he had long headed American University’s Center for the Global South, and where he could call upon his long experience, powerful intellect, and deep reservoirs of respect across the world.

His pragmatism showed in several ways at the U.N. One was when he deployed the rhetorical skills he had honed in the Oxford Union and “Maksoudized,” as it was known—fondly, one might add. Superb and soaring, polysyllabic and poetical, his speeches mesmerized audiences—but left them scratching their heads as they wondered what he had actually said. When I asked him about it while he was at the U.N., he smiled and explained, “I represent the Arab League—it is almost impossible to say anything concrete that will not upset at least one of the members.”

As Arab League ambassador to the U.N., Clovis Maksoud has also left a lasting legacy that is equally mixed in its effects. He crafted the deal that synchronized the Asian and African groups’ cycles to ensure that there would always be an Arab representative on the Security Council.

It is not in the Charter, but by longstanding agreement, temporary seats are apportioned on the basis of geographical regions: Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and the West European and Other Group. Eastern Europe was essentially the Warsaw Pact countries, which have now almost all joined the European Union and NATO, or are trying to, but they maintain the fiction—claiming, for example, that it is their group’s “turn” to have a secretary-general. West European and Other was sufficiently elastic to include Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and thus allowed itself to be bullied into accepting Israel as a member.

In the U.N.’s version of geography, the Arab world is split between Asia and Africa, each of which has five temporary seats rotated on a two-year cycle. More often than not—as with so many U.N. positions—the fix is in. The diplomats at the U.N. courteously sort out a rota to avoid unseemly contests and surprises. One can tell decades ahead which member state will be “elected.” It is the same system that eviscerates the Human Rights Council by putting some of the most egregious offenders on it. At least the Human Rights Council made a pretense for a while of fielding more candidates than seats—even if they all knew which were the real candidates and which were for show.

The deal Ambassador Maksoud made was that every two years, Asia would reserve a seat for an Arab League member and in the alternate biennium one of the North African Arab states would rotate around. This was the cozy arrangement that returned dubiously Arab countries like Djibouti to the Council and regularly seats Security Council members who are in flagrant violation of the Council’s own resolutions. That is not an exclusively Arab problem, of course, but it lends neither prestige nor potency to the U.N. as an institution and the Security Council as its highest embodiment of the international community in matters of war and peace. 

When Ambassador Maksoud crafted the deal, his concern was that there be an Arab voice on issues like Palestine that united them, and that there was at least vestigial respect for the notion of Arab Unity. But, of course, that fell apart after the original Egypt-Israel deal and never recovered. It has now become a diplomatic career opportunity for salespeople of unelected oligarchs.

THE SECURITY COUNCIL ­ADVANTAGE

The point of being on the Security Council was more than adequately demonstrated earlier this year, when Western Sahara appeared yet again on the agenda. The imbroglio has dire potential beyond the Polisario (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro) and Morocco.

Quietly but effectively, the issue has eroded the always parlous authority of both the secretary-general and the Security Council that have, with all their failings, done a lot to keep the peace since 1945. In March Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the camps in Tindouf and, clearly upset by what he saw, called for the referendum on self-determination and referred to the Moroccan presence across much of Western Sahara as an “occupation.”

He had a similar epiphany when he visited Gaza early in his mandate and saw for himself the reality behind the clinically cleansed language of U.N. resolutions. When Ban made his statements Morocco went into unprecedented paroxysms of undiplomatic denunciation, claiming—totally falsely—that the U.N. and the international community accepted its annexation.

In a breathtaking abuse of language, Morocco accused the U.N. secretary-general of “semantic slippage” for using the term “occupation” and, along with even more incoherent indignation, noted with “utter dismay the verbal slippages, faits accomplis and unjustified complacency” of the secretary-general. It ordered the U.N. staff out of the territory it controlled. The kingdom staged mass “spontaneous” demonstrations against the secretary-general in the Moroccan capital, Rabat.

There were clear U.N. resolutions and decisions, not just about the territory’s status but about the U.N. staff. It was an unprecedented challenge to the Security Council’s authority. Remember, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was put on trial for such temerity.

The International Court of Justice had ruled that the Sahrawis are entitled to exercise their right to self-determination, and dismissed Moroccan claims to the land and the fealty of its people. The General Assembly had called for the “occupation” to be ended, and the Security Council had from the beginning asked the Moroccans to withdraw. Security Council Resolution 690, passed in 1991, established MINURSO, the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, to implement settlement proposals that Morocco had accepted in 1988.

Rabat had paid lip service to the referendum while it tried to pack the electoral rolls with its settlers, but when it became clear that the eligible voters wanted Morocco out, the kingdom insisted that the referendum must exclude any question of independence. Almost as revealingly, Morocco and France have fought successfully to ensure that MINURSO remains the only peacekeeping operation without a human rights monitoring component.

When Morocco ordered U.N. staff to leave, Ban sought the support of the Security Council—but did not get it, due to opposition from France, Egypt and Japan. After days of backroom wrangling, the most the Council could deliver was an anodyne appeal for the mission to continue.

Persuaded by his staff that the U.N. term was a “non-self-governing” territory rather than an “occupied” one, Ban, even though upset by the Moroccan tirades, explained that his use of the term was his personal emotional reaction to the plight of the refugees. He did not back down from the clear decisions of the U.N. over the years, but modified his entirely accurate statement for the exigencies of diplomacy.

He and his advisers were appalled by the lack of active support from major Security Council members which, in effect, handed Morocco a proxy veto via France and its African allies. If only to uphold the authority of the institution, the Council should have had much stronger resolution about Morocco’s behavior.

A COMPROMISED SYSTEM

Morocco and its friends have thoroughly compromised the U.N. system on the Saharan issue. U.N. officials have been bribed and browbeaten not to challenge the Moroccan version with anything as upsetting as the truth. Interestingly. the MINURSO website begins its list of U.N. resolutions in 1991, when it was set up, not in 1975, when the Security Council asked Morocco to get out!

Rabat has consistently refused to hold the referendum that the Mission was sent to prepare for. The king, like his father before, knows he would lose it. And, once again shamelessly backed by France, Morocco’s successful opposition to permit a human rights component in MINURSO is a telling indication of how he intends to keep it.

In May, the Security Council sent a delegation to talk to Arab League countries in Cairo, where many of them grandstanded, demanding (rightly) that the Council should enforce its resolutions on Middle East peace and settlements. They seem to be missing the point that France’s attempts to jump start the peace process at the eastern end of the Maghreb are compromised by its own behavior on the western end. Perhaps summing it up, it was reported that, at a recent gathering, a former French ambassador to the U.N. reprimanded his British former colleague for being a puppet of the U.S.—for which he got the deserved riposte, “Better than being the King of Morocco’s puppet!” ◙

A line in the Sand for International Law

Letter from America – Ian Williams

Written By: Ian Williams

Published: March 19, 2016 Last modified: March 18, 2016

The paths of two much mis-underestimated, highly ethical individuals crossed recently. A year before he became leader of the Labour Party, I saw Jeremy Corbyn at the House of Commons report back from a visit to Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. It was an impressive performance. Invoking Western Sahara is no way for a politician to win votes, nor even for a writer to win commissions! Second, the audience was loaded with Moroccans whipped in by their ­government to support its claims to the territory.

He dealt with them impressively, listening respectfully while calmly stating facts and restating principles in a way that averted provocation and conflict. I did not know it then, but he was foreshadowing his remarkable self control in the face of fanatical New Labour types who cannot believe they lost with all the certainty of Moroccans who cannot believe that anyone could question their right to rule the Sahara.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon went to Western Sahara earlier this month and stated a few home truths about the continuing occupation there and compounded his sins by visiting the headquarters of Polisario, the Saharwi independence front. Morocco went into paroxysms of counterfactual denunciation and claims that the UN and the international community accept its annexation. In a breath-taking abuse of language it accused the UN Secretary General of “semantic slippage”, for using the term “occupation” and expressed, among even more incoherent indignation noted with “utter dismay the verbal slippages, faits accomplis and unjustified complacency” of Ban.

In reality, away from whatever they smoke in offices of Morocco’s highly paid Public relations company, the International Court of Justice has ruled that the people of Western Sahara are entitled to self-determination. The UN Security Council has ruled that Morocco should withdraw from the territory and allow an act of self-determination. For more than 20 years, there has been a UN mission there to conduct a referendum – and Morocco has officially accepted those terms – even though in international law they do not really have any option. The world’s maps all show the territory separate from Morocco.

The Security Council resolution in 1975 called for Morocco to withdraw from the territory, and it has been defying it ever since. However, underlying their indignation, which highlights Ban’s courage, is that Morocco and its friends have thoroughly compromised the UN system. Successive UN officials have been bribed, suborned and browbeaten not to challenge the Moroccan version with anything as upsetting as the truth. ­Interestingly, MINURSO’s own website begins its list of UN resolutions in 1991, when it was set up, not in 1975, when the Security Council asked Morocco to get out.

Morocco has had outright support from France, and it benefits from good relations with Israel. In the words of then US ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan about Sahara and East Timor in 1975: “The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.” Since then, it has tried to tidy things up but not enough to annoy the Moroccans, and one supposes that the issue was clinched by the $5 million-plus paid to the Clinton Foundation by the Moroccan-owned phosphate company that is looting Western Sahara’s phosphates.

Hillary Clinton, as US Secretary of State, tried to push Barack Obama’s administration to accept the dubious “autonomy” plan promoted by King Mohammed that excluded the option of independence for Western Sahara from the terms of the referendum. One should add that Polisario is about as compromised as any other “liberation movement” of the seventies in terms of its adherence to human rights. But the most convincing element of the Sahrawi claim is the Moroccan refusal to allow a referendum. The King knows he would lose it.

History should provide a pre-emptively answer to anyone who asks why we should worry about “a quarrel, in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing”. Britain is a permanent member of the Security Council of the UN, pledged to uphold the UN Charter, and with a few notable exceptions has been fairly good at it. The UK delegation has been reluctantly supportive of what Robin Cook would have called the ethical dimension of foreign policy over the Sahara, but is palpably discomforted by all the sordid reasons it should go along with others who would happily sell the Sahrawis down the sand dunes.

Both Ban and Corbyn see that an injustice perpetuated like this attacks the basic principles of the United Nations. In the face of the frantic Moroccan assault on Ban Ki-moon, Britain, and indeed ­Jeremy Corbyn, should be signalling ­support for the Secretary General’s brave initiative, aimed as it is at rescuing­hundreds of thousands of people from life in exile of under occupation.

About Ian Williams

Ian Williams is Tribune's UN correspondent

United Nations Report Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June July 2015.

U.S. Protects Israeli Occupation, U.N. Reinforces Morocco’s in Western Sahara

By Ian Williams

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (r) meets with Kim Bolduc, his Special Representative and Head of the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). (UN PHOTO/EVAN SCHNEIDER)

THERE IS NOTHING LIKE watching the great powers at work to demonstrate just how ephemeral “eternal” principles are, and how expedient their implementation. It is reported that Washington is trying to persuade the French, in particular, to back-pedal on their attempt to lay down the accepted principles of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. This would essentially emphasize the illegality of settlement activity and the applicability of the 1967 boundaries as enshrined in numerous repeated U.N. resolutions over the years and accepted by every country in the world except Israel.

But for once, the Obama administration is not doing this simply as a favor to Israel. It is a different kind of pandering: Washington is discreetly asking the other countries to hold back so that the White House can concentrate on the Iranian deal and get it through Congress in the teeth of Israeli lobby opposition. It is demeaning, of course, but over the decades not uncommon for American diplomats to plead for forbearance with foreign colleagues so that they can cope with geopolitically illiterate American legislators.

In this case there is an extra twist, in that the U.S. is hinting that once the Iran deal is done, it can get around to dealing with Binyamin Netanyahu’s recalcitrance, with the further hint that Israel cannot take the American veto at the U.N. for granted.

That raises the question of why President Barack Obama could not say that before the Israeli election. Netanyahu has gratuitously interfered in domestic American politics all his political career, and in particular over the Iran issue. If Obama and Secretary of State Kerry had forcefully announced to the world that should Netanyahu persist in disavowing agreed terms for peace and refused to stop settlement, there would be no guarantee of a U.S. veto in the Security Council, it might well have cost him the election. Israeli voters see no downside in Netanyahu’s chutzpah,and clearly a majority of them agree with his hard-line stance—as long as he can get away with it.

In a chain of connections, the Marshall Islands is one of the few countries that frequently supports the U.S. on Israel. Of course, it has to! It was one of the former U.N. strategic trust territories in the Pacific taken from Japan and administered by the U.S., and Washington only agreed to its “independence” if it relinquished its right to its own defense and consulted with the U.S. on foreign affairs.

Even at the time, that raised eyebrows, since these are some of the crucial indicators of sovereignty. Nonetheless, the General Assembly accepted the new micro states as full members, and they have consistently voted with the U.S. on Middle Eastern issues. Among the few sources of revenue were annual grants from Congress, so no wonder the islanders were so interested in Middle Eastern affairs. One other revenue source was fees from the islands’ sideline as a flag of convenience, where American shipowners could escape domestic labor and safety regulations.

But at the end of April unforeseen consequences cropped up when Iran arrested an American ship that was flagged out of the Marshall Islands. Some Israeli commentators immediately tried to get the U.S. Navy to fulfill its defense obligations under international law—for them, of course, it is always a good day to attack Iran. Interestingly, the Marshall Islands would have recourse to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea since it is a signatory—unlike the U.S., Israel and Iran! Quite why the U.S. should risk World War III for a shipping company that expatriated its ships to avoid U.S. taxation and regulation is a question that remains unanswered.

While Arab states and others—such as France—are quick, and correct, to call attention to how U.S.-drafted Security Council resolutions bend over backward to cover for a certain state on the eastern end of the Mediterranean, they remain resolutely silent over France’s cover for another state at the opposite end of the Mediterranean that flouts previous resolutions and international law.

A Free Pass for Morocco

Morocco’s continuing occupation of the Western Sahara, with its own separation wall, the Berm, snaking across the desert, continues to get a free pass in Resolution 2218 passed April 28 in New York.

The name of the U.N. operation that the resolution extends for yet another year says it all. MINURSO, in full, is the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, and it was set up in 1991 with a timetable of one year. Almost a quarter of a century has passed, with Morocco still impeding any attempt to implement the “self-determination of the people of Western Sahara in the context of arrangements consistent with the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations” that the resolution breezily refers to in its preamble, even as its substance robs it of meaning.

Back in 1991, Johannes Mantz, the first head of the mission, promised the U.N. press corps that the operation would be open within a year, since a Spanish census 18 years before had identified the voting roll and even the infants had now come of age. There is now an entirely new generation of Sahrawis born and come of voting age.

Many of these are young, unemployed and disaffected, and the secretary-general’s report gives evidence of unrest and demonstrations on both sides of the Berm, in Polisario- and Moroccan-controlled territories alike. After decades in which the world seemed happy to let the Sahrawis wallow in their misery as long as there was no spillover, there are now increasing worries at the possibilities of destabilization in the region. The possibilities for smuggling and cross-border crime are now joined by apprehension at the prospects of extremist recruitment of unemployed youth with few if any prospects and facing rampant injustice exacerbated by the “benign neglect” of the world community.

The African Union, whose membership includes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), has taken a renewed interest in the issue and has been pushing for a referendum. After all, one of the founding principles of the Union was that the old colonial boundaries had to be respected, not so much because of their own inherent value but rather because the belligerent consequences of trying to redraw them would be so bloody. Morocco did not join the Union because of SADR’s membership—and objected in April when the Union tried to get the SADR delegate to speak on non-proliferation in Africa.

A veritable chorus of forked tongues speaks on the issue, with words getting new and Orwellian meanings. The U.N. reports praise Morocco for its progress on human rights in the territory, while Morocco and France, with active U.S. and British support and Russian connivance, fought to ensure that the resolution did not mandate an active human rights monitoring mission called for by the African Union.

The West often castigates Africa for its allegedly lackadaisical attitude to human rights violations. But in this case the great powers actively fought to keep MINURSO the only U.N. peacekeeping mission without a human rights component, and for the even more singular honor of being the Mission for the Referendum on self-determination on the Western Sahara that is not allowed to carry out a referendum or mention that Rabat has repeatedly announced that it will not allow self-determination.

Polisario has raised Morocco’s sale of off-shore oil rights to foreign oil companies and had thechutzpah to justify it by reference to the 2002 letter on the matter from Hans Corell, who was then U.N. undersecretary-general for legal affairs. As he has repeatedly said since then in several articles, the legal opinion he gave was that selling the oil contracts was in flagrant breach of the Geneva conventions on Occupied Territories—and that the companies accepting the contracts were in breach of international law.

While even the U.S. does not insist on praising Israel for its cooperation when it so clearly does not cooperate, the April U.N. resolution praises Morocco for its progress in the teeth of its flamboyant defiance.

Principles can be so tedious for politicians. ❑

---

Ian Williams 

Obama, International Law, Morocco & Israel

Obama Allowing Netanyahu Government To Be Hoist by Its Own Petard

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Pages 18-19

United Nations Report

Obama Allowing Netanyahu Government To Be Hoist by Its Own Petard

By Ian Williams

EU Foreign Minister Javier Solana arrives to meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank city of Ramallah, June 11, 2009. That day Solana also urged Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to commit to the concept of a Palestinian state. (AFP photo/Abbas Momani)

European Union Foreign Minister Javier Solana recently upset the Israelis by declaring: “After a fixed deadline, a U.N. Security Council resolution should proclaim the adoption of the two-state solution. This should include all the parameters of borders, refugees, and Jerusalem and security arrangements. It would accept the Palestinian state as a full member of the U.N., and set a calendar for implementation. It would mandate the resolution of other remaining territorial disputes and legitimize the end of claims.”

One wonders whether he would have said so without a wink and a nod from Washington. It is, after all, a highly plausible end game to the current Obama strategy—and, indeed, all the more so since the latter is completely, and one presumes deliberately, silent about the United Nations.

For years, the beginning, middle and end of Israeli strategy was to keep the U.N. out of it. Israel was not interested in the implementation of U.N. Resolutions, whether on the right to return or 242 and the other resolutions on the occupied territories.

Then came the Quartet, which brought in the U.S., Russia, the EU and the U.N. However, this was not so much about bringing in the United Nations as about cocooning all its inconvenient resolutions in a cordon sanitaire of diplomacy. The U.N. found itself not only subscribed, by proxy, to American positions—such as the boycott of Hamas—which had no mandate whatsoever from its membership or previous resolutions, but hamstrung from reaffirming its own membership-mandated positions, even as successive Israeli prime ministers twisted the road map into an origami Möbius strip, going round infinitely without ever reaching an end.

Even under President Bill Clinton, the formula was to let the Palestinians and the Israelis negotiate “freely” in the full expectation that the Palestinians would negotiate away most of their impeccably legal positions based upon U.N. resolutions. As I said at the time, it was like putting a Sumo wrestler in the ring together with a toddler and calling for a fair fight.

Fortunately the PLO representatives in New York had a clearer vision. They constantly reaffirmed the U.N. resolutions, convening emergency General Assemblies, a meeting of the signatories to the Geneva Conventions and, of course, the successful referral of Israel’s separation wall to the International Court of Justice.

Arab opponents have attacked Obama for being soft on Israel, despite this administration being tougher than any since Bush-Baker turned the thumbscrews on Likud almost two decades ago. They are missing the point. Most notably, Obama and his team have had little or no domestic opposition to their policy—precisely because it has not invoked international law and the United Nations. Looking at the contempt with which Congress (and Israel) has treated the U.N. and international law on the issue, any evocation of it by Obama’s team would have been more likely to help create a focus of resistance to his policies than induce support for them.

Had the administration made grandiloquent statements of principles that were not accepted in Washington and in the U.S., those statements would have remained empty ones, thwarted by the Lobby in a Congress which has never accepted that U.N. resolutions apply to either the U.S. or Israel.

Instead, everything the Obama team has asked of Netanyahu—acceptance of a two-state solution and a freeze on settlements—is based on a prior commitment by Israel to the Quartet. Those commitments were supported by AIPAC and by most pro-Israel legislators, who so far have wisely chosen not to eat their own words.

It is an achievement all the more remarkable given Obama’s tussles with Capitol Hill over the economy, defense spending, climate change and healthcare, and suggests the Achilles heel of single-issue foreign interest lobbies. Their legislators could try to hold the White House hostage over pressing issues to get a more pro-Likud stance—but they would be committing electoral suicide if they were revealed as thwarting economic recovery on behalf of a foreign power.

The last thing the Lobby in its various manifestations wants is to highlight that the U.S. is sending $3 billion a year of hard-pressed taxpayers’ money to an ungrateful foreign government that is giving the bird to American policy.

More importantly, there has been a shift in view among American Jews and their organizations. Likudnik American Jews who vociferously oppose the road map and Obama are more likely to be found in West Bank settlements waving Uzis, or raving on about Obama’s birth certificate, than having the ear of Democratic Party leaders.

And like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, they are crying before they have been pricked. The White House has been very measured, restating its position firmly and frequently, but it has not yet had to make any threats. Simply holding firm on settlements has been enough to cause bewilderment and panic in the Israeli government, whose politicians are accustomed to enthusiastic acquiescence for whatever circumlocutions they use to disguise their contempt for restrictions on their land theft.

In that sense, Netanyahu’s coalition, not least with the odious Avigdor Lieberman, has been a godsend to Obama. In times past, Labor knew how to sound sincere even as it continued the bipartisan policy of settlement expansion. The open breach of Israeli road map commitments, the humanitarian and political disaster of Operation Cast Lead, and the inhumanity of the evictions in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood have even further reduced international and American domestic support for the Likud-led coalition.

Israel’s ruling coalition is ideological and theological in its make-up—faith-based, in fact. That gives some confidence that it will star in its own downfall. While its members see it as self-evident that Jews should be allowed to settle anywhere in the West Bank, seizing other people’s land to so, they take it as axiomatic that Palestinians should not be allowed to return to their ancestral homes. It is not an axiom that the rest of the world shares.

The Israeli electorate has been accustomed to taking U.S. support for granted regardless of what its elected governments do. There has been some realization that things have changed, as demonstrated by the huge contrast between the tepid support for Obama in Israel and his overwhelming support among American Jews. However, it seems as if the news that they have little or no American support at any level has not percolated down to the Israeli voters. Fortunately, Obama can count upon Lieberman, Netanyahu and company to extend their provocation to the point where the White House will have overwhelming support for getting tougher.

So far, the Obama administration has carefully refrained from doing anything that could in any way be construed as coercive or would in any way allow Netanyahu to rally the pro-Israel American faithful.

A good point to send a signal would be the “charitable” tax exemptions for deranged Zionist organizations funding the settlements (see p. 10). In Britain, many years ago, the Charity Commissioners refused to accept the Jewish National Fund as a tax-exempt entity—settling Jews was not a charitable objective. It appears to be one such organization that masterminded the “purchase” of the houses in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem from which 50 Palestinians, whose families were originally driven from West Jerusalem, were expelled to make way for settlers. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quite rightly condemned this provocative and inhumane act. The European Union denounced it as being against international law.

Surely, forbearance notwithstanding, it’s time for a little more activity. The White House should have words with the IRS, which runs 501(c)(3) “charitable” organizations, to scrutinize the philanthropic status of bodies that thwart international law. After all, it is a perilous business to send funds to finance terrorist organizations, so why should those who fund such unsavory and illegal practices in the occupied territories be exempt from taxes?

We can leave the three billion until later, but this would surely send a message of serious intent.

Western Sahara: Another Intractable Problem

While there has been some talk of the U.S. proposing, and implicitly imposing, a solution on the Middle East, there is of course another intractable problem on which the U.N. and international law has an unequivocal position defied by one state. Yes, Morocco still occupies Western Sahara, and Christopher Cox, the former American diplomat who was belatedly appointed U.N. special representative, is supposed to be presenting a peace plan drawn up by the Obama administration. Recent estimates are that Morocco has been spending $12 million a day on its occupation—between 3-5 percent of its GDP and up to 20 percent of the state budget.

Most peace plans presented recently have been designed to abrogate the Sahrawis legal rights, clearly laid down by the International Court of Justice and successive U.N. resolutions, to an “act of self-determination”: a referendum. For more than three decades Morocco has thwarted this, precisely because it knows it would lose. The Polisario is more optimistic this time. Morocco resisted Cox’s appointment for many months since it suspected him of not being biddable enough—and it could in the past invoke discreet Israeli support for its stand. The latter factor may have lost its importance at the moment. Having Bibi Netanyahu as a character witness may not be the advantage it once was.

In a recent article before the Vienna talks between Morocco and Polisario, Polisario representative Mohammed Khadad said, “the people of Western Sahara have been clear that we are willing to work with the Moroccan monarchy and will act without recrimination in relation to Moroccans now living in Western Sahara.” The second part is eminently good political sense, but the first part is intriguing. It could be a response to a suggestion made by this writer.

Morocco’s nebulous claim, dismissed by the World Court, was that the tribes of the former Spanish colony owed fealty to the Moroccan ruling family. The parties could take a tip from the British Queen, whose head appears on the stamps and coins of the several dozen Commonwealth countries of which she is still head of state, but over which the British government has no control whatsoever. Offering King Mohamed VI of Morocco the position of Mohamed Iof Western Sahara—i.e., a constitutional monarch—could salve the wounded dynastic pride of the Moroccan leader, while stanching the bleeding of the economy for poverty-stricken Moroccans who have to sustain the huge army of occupation in the South.

The result would have to be endorsed by the United Nations to take legal effect, but if the U.S. is serious about it, Western Sahara could join East Timor on the list of cleared-up items on the Security Council’s backed up agenda—paving the way, perhaps, for the implementation of 242.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations and has a blog at <www.deadlinepundit.blogspot.com>.

All Hail Freedonia: Groucho for Congress

Here's the full text of "Save Freedonia" in the Guardian Comment-is-Free

When it comes to Western Sahara, America's Africa policy is so bad you'd think it was dealing with an imaginary country from a Groucho Marx movie.
Ian Williams

May 1, 2007 7:30 PM

Not many people have heard of the Western Sahara dispute and most congressmen could not tell it from Freedonia - until the lobbyists came a-knocking.

Yesterday, the UN Security Council fought back a Franco-American effort to rewrite international law in favour of Morocco and against the people of Western Sahara. Morocco has offered dubious "autonomy" to Western Sahara, but is refusing to hold the referendum in the territory that the World Court and the UN Security Council have called for - and to which Morocco had agreed, until it became clear that it would lose.

The compromise resolution did not endorse the Moroccan plan, but called for talks between Morocco and the Sahrawi Polisario, "with a view to achieving a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara." The Moroccan plan directly precluded self-determination.

The US's new pro-Moroccan policy was heralded last week when no less than 168 members of congress signed a letter demanding that the White House support Morocco - regardless of international law or previous policy.

We can safely assume that at least 160 of them had never heard of Western Sahara a month ago. When the learned members of congress rush to sign a fact-free letter on foreign policy, you can be sure that there is a lobby at work.

Not that the lobbies have to work too hard. In foreign policy matters congressmen can be like urinal walls - you can write anything on them. In 1992, a Spy magazine reporter called some two score Republican congressional new-comers for the Newt Gingrich revolution and asked them what they were going to do about the situation in Freedonia. The neocons had not taken over then, so not one of them suggested regime change and getting rid of Groucho. Instead, they waffled in a statesmanlike way about the efforts they would take to ensure stability there.

So, on this occasion, who could be too surprised to discover that the lobbyists responsible for those diplomatic triumphs, the war in Iraq, the war on terror, the embargo on Cuba and America's uncritical support for whichever nudnik heads the Knesset were also those who garnered the 168 signatures?

Morocco has put in some $30m into its lobbying effort and, through its surrogate, the "Moroccan American Policy Center", has been tickling the soft underbelly of the congress.

Toby Muffett, a former Connecticut representative who had been elected on a Naderite clean-up-Congress ticket, engagingly described a week in the life of a lobbyist in the Los Angeles Times recently:

I leave and rush to the House side of the Capitol to meet another client, the ambassador from Morocco. We have a meeting with a key member of the Appropriations Committee. Morocco has a good story to tell. It is a reliable friend of the U.S. It believes that the long-standing dispute with Algeria and the rebel Polisario group over the western Sahara must be resolved.

We tell the congresswoman and her staff that the region is becoming a possible Al Qaeda training area. ...My idea is to sell this as a chance for Democrats to resolve a dispute in a critical region, in contrast to the president's utter failure to fix anything.

And on the Republican side, Elliot Abrams the "deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy", a hawkish pro-Israeli supporter and one of the neocon devisers of the Iraq war, has also been pushing the Moroccan plan, betraying the same insouciance towards legal technicalities that he did when convicted over the Iran/Contra scandal.

In Washington, the Moroccan Embassy hired Edelman for $35,000 a month as its lobbyist, which of course had nothing to with the timely letter from an increasingly conservative and belligerent American Jewish Committee weighing in with a letter of support for the king, who combines being chair of the Organization of the Islamic Conference's Committee for Jerusalem with being one of Israel's best friends in the Arab world.

For Morocco supporters, an enemy's friend is a hated foe. Polisario has the dubious benefit of Castro's support and that is enough, (plus a $15,000 monthly retainer) to rally the Florida delegation, which has also noticed that El Jefe has a soft spot for the Palestinians as well, with similar results on their voting patterns.


The 168 signatories are almost a roll-call of anti-Castro, pro-Israeli members of Congress, and their numbers were doubtless boosted when the MACP recently hired the law-and-lobbying firm of Alberto Cardenas, a veteran anti-Castro Cuban American who served two terms as head of Florida's Republican Party and co-chaired Bush's 2004 effort in the Sunshine State.

That alone should put in relief his concern for Democracy in north Africa. But just in case you had lingering doubts, Freedom House and similar bodies give Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara and Zimbabwe the same human rights score, just beating, by a wrenched out finger-nail, Tibet, Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan.

If in doubt, of course, invoke terrorism. Most of the letters from the King's men and women invoke the Polisario-held areas as potential heartlands of al-Qaida style terrorism. Oddly enough, in the real world, the Polisario's biggest supporter is Algeria, which is battling Islamic extremists with some considerable vigour - indeed a little too much for some tender minded observers - while Polisario itself was, until recently, proclaimed a communist plot by American politicians, which is why they have tacitly supported the Moroccan occupation all these years.

But luckily, it's not all Duck Soup on Capitol Hill - even if there are far too many horse feathers around for comfort. Most of the members of the African subcommittee in the house were among the 50-plus who signed an opposing letter demanding US support for Sahrawi self-determination. But without Moroccan money behind it, not many people heard about the story.

It's no way to rule a world!

All Hail Freedonia!

Latest on Guardian Comment is Free about Western Sahara and the lobbyists in Washington.
Click to join in and comment.

UN Blackout on Polisario?

So who sabotaged the TV feed for Polisario?

April 30 was another day at the UN Security Council Stakeout. As the Polisario representative Ahmed Boukhari was answering questions, someone called the control room and told them to fade the cameras to black. No one has confessed, but some Moroccan present or former member of UN staff will doubtless be rewarded by his grateful Kingdom.

In fact, whoever it was has done an oblique favour by reminding us that Morocco's arguments have no legal credibility whatsoever. Their only weapon is to silence the truth.

For over 15 years the issue of the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara has come up every six months ago as the Council members agree to pour yet even more money into the sand for MINURSO, the peace-keeping force. Everyone wishes the issue would just go away, since it poses such a clear challenge to the UN and to international law. The ICJ said there should be a referendum, the Security Council said Morocco should end the occupation and endorsed a ceasefire that was to end in a referendum. Even the former King of Morocco said there should be a referendum – although he stopped saying it as soon it was apparent that he could not win since MINURSO would not let him pad the electoral rolls with Moroccans.

But no one had enough of a dog in the fight to force Morocco to abide by Security Council resolutions. On the other hand, smaller members have been concerned enough to thwart the perennial plans of France and others to hand the territory over to Morocco. This time the French were joined by the Americans, but once again they could not railroad a decision past the atavistic attachment of the smaller members to international law. Even so, the resolution shamelessly thanks the Moroccans for their initiative in offering spurious autonomy – without a referendum or the option of independence while only noting Polisario's willingness to go along with the full letter of UN resolutions.

The non-aligned are right to be cautious. If Morocco can overturn international law, and legalize its movement of settlers into and annexation of occupied territory, then why can't Israel? The Arab countries that stand by and let Morocco get away with this are forging the weapons to dispossess the Palestinians, whose only remaining weapon is international law and United Nations decisions.

And that is not to mention condemning their Arab brothers of the Sahara to a justly condemned regime that consistently violates their human and national rights.

What Wall? What Occupation?

Here's the full text of my Guardian comment on Western Sahara...
For which I was attacked, (as always) on Serbia and Kosovo.

What wall? What occupation?

It's time to stop Morocco's prevarication over Western Sahara.
Ian Williams

April 13, 2007 4:00 PM | Printable version

It's not double standards, it's no standards at all. The world has let scoff-law Morocco ride roughshod over international law and the UN Charter. It helps to have friends!

Their territory split by a huge wall built at enormous expense, an occupied Arab population suffers under police raids and arbitrary imprisonment while the occupiers try to swamp the territories with settlers from their own population. In response, the locals are beginning an intifada, but face a much larger, better-equipped military force, the beneficiary of substantial overseas aid. Refugees living in camps are refused the right to return to their homes.

Despite clear decisions of the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council, the occupiers hedge whenever it comes down to the question of a peace settlement that grants independence even when American emissaries try to nudge them towards serious talks.

Welcome to Western Sahara, the occupation that admittedly has lasted only three decades compared with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but which has excited much less media interest.

This week, the issue came back to what passes for the fore in this forgotten conflict, when the Polisario, on behalf of the Sahwaris and the Kingdom of Morocco both submitted their plans for the resolution of the problem.

The Moroccan one is superficially attractive after all these decades, offering Scottish-style devolution. But their track record on keeping promises is far from stellar. Over 15 years ago, Morocco accepted a peace deal that involved the referendum on self-determination. The cash-strapped UN has spent hundreds of millions on keeping a force there to monitor the cease-fire and arrange a vote. But as soon as it became clear that Morocco would lose any vote that involved independence, the king and his father before him, gave prevarication a bad name. They tried to stack the voters' rolls, and when that failed, simply refused to allow a vote that asked the question.

Morocco's human rights record leaves much to be desired, as indeed did Polisario's in the old days. But the Moroccan reticence about allowing a vote is eloquent testimony to the government's assessment of the popular mood.

What is the secret of Morocco's success? In essence, it is choosing friends carefully.

Morocco claims Arab solidarity - and is one of the best friends of Israel in the Arab World. Immediately after the Moroccans occupied the territory despite the ICJ ruling that rubbished its territorial claims, the UN security council passed resolutions 379 and 380, which explicitly and unconditionally called on Morocco to withdraw. However, the French and Americans blocked the enforcing of these resolutions. According to then-US ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "the Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."

While the US's anti-communist fervour has died down - with communism - France has remained an important and unprincipled supporter of the king. Despite all that Cartesian rhetoric with which it opposed the invasion of Iraq, over the Sahara it has a novel and disturbing principle: the security council cannot impose its decisions on parties if they disagree.

France has claimed there was a tradition of using consensus on Western Sahara, which was a bit like the apocryphal prisoner who had killed his parents and then asked for the court's sympathy because he was an orphan. Any such "tradition" developed in response to constant French and American attempts to railroad a pro-Moroccan position past the other security council members in defiance of all previous decisions.

Britain's attitude seems to be that it does not have a dog in the fight, so it is prepared to go along with the Americans and the French. But the standing of international law, the UN charter and principles are surely a dog worth backing in any foreign policy with - in Robin Cook's words - "an ethical dimension". In the end, the illegal Indonesia occupation of East Timor succumbed to the persistent refusal of the world to recognise it.

Polisario has made a very reasonable offer, which is in complete accordance with UN resolutions and international law. It could also offer, instead of a Scottish style solution with the Moroccan army and secret police still in occupation - a Canadian style solution. We will put King Mohammed on our coins and welcome an occasional royal visit - but nothing more.

But in any case, the UK, the EU, and the UN, should stop accommodating Morocco and France and step up the pressure on Rabat. It's the law.